How to Achieve Brand Consistency in Your Marketing Efforts

Branding is how you define your company and what you do. It’s how your customers recognize you and how they relate to your message.

It has the power to put you on the map and increases the value of your products. And it allows you to build lasting relationships with buyers and keep your company growing steadily.

If you’ve got brand consistency, you can really build a name for yourself.

But if you don’t pay mind to it, then people looking in from the outside might be left a little confused and take their business elsewhere.

Today, we’re going to look at how you can achieve brand consistency in your marketing efforts. Don’t leave anything up to interpretation. No one should know what you represent better than you do, so you’ve got to dictate where interactions with your customers go.

Only the strong survive and strong branding is at the heart of everything, so let’s get started.

How to Achieve Brand Consistency for Your Company

Achieving brand consistency is all about remaining mindful of what you’re setting out to convey. Never forget what the message at the core of everything is and display it visually and through your content, as much as possible.

Create Internal Guidelines

If you’re going to maintain brand consistency, then everyone’s going to need to get on the same page. Sit down with your fellow managers, partners, and creative team and figure out which direction you’re taking this thing in.

Branding encompasses everything internally and externally in a company, so how you portray yourself visually with logos, promotion, and your voice will be at the forefront of this consistency we’re talking about. What people see and hear should always relate back to your branding.

Work Intimately with Creative Partners

To do this, you’ll have to work closely with your creative team or firm to really nail down how you want to come across. Visuals are a huge part of your online and offline marketing strategy. Come up with a great logo and theme, then ensure that everything you put out into the world reflects these designs.

Once you’ve got that locked down, share the approved designs with your entire staff. Put them in a folder that they can access when they need to use the logo for a project. Also, give them approved image sizes for specific platforms so that you never run the risk of your logo being warped or distorted.

The Content

While the design elements are a big part of what people associate with branding, your voice is actually just as important. If you don’t preach a consistent message to your consumers, you’re going to end up confusing them.

All of the content that you put out should have an underlying (or in your face) message relating to your brand. It could be a slogan, an ethos, or a combination of a few things.

Blog posts, YouTube videos, and social media posts should all feel like they’re coming from the same source. Your blog content should be centered around the niche you’ve cut out for yourself, injected with a similar tone every time. Consumers like companies that know who they are.

If you’ve got a bubbly vibe on Instagram and Twitter, you should keep the same vibe in your blog posts and videos. If you’ve got a stern vibe in your blog and videos, then your customers are going to have a hard time picturing the same people behind the Instagram and Twitter posts.

Offline Marketing

While digital marketing has taken up the mantle as the most used form of marketing, offline marketing still has its time and place. Direct mail, trade shows, commercials, and billboards still bring in a lot of customers and shouldn’t be ignored.

Always make sure that your offline marketing ideas complement your digital marketing campaigns rather than allow them to get in the way of one another.

A lot of people who receive direct mail from businesses are more likely to engage with them online. If that person types in their website and a totally different looking visual comes up on the screen with a different tone, then there’s going to be a problem.

Participation with New Platforms and Influencers

New marketing trends pop up out of nowhere constantly. If you know yourself, then you’ll know which ones to get in on and which ones to avoid.

This ability is going to be huge for consistency. If your consumers see you back a new platform that doesn’t align with what they know about your brand, they might pull back a bit.

To avoid any mishaps, ask yourself a few questions before entering a partnership with a new startup:

• First, will your target customers use this new platform and are you going to find value in the partnership?
• Is a brand like yours well represented on a platform like this and does moving forward with it align with your branding strategy?
• Lastly, if you were a consumer, would you trust your brand if it appeared on this new platform?

Answering these questions will help you pick and choose who you partner with. If it makes sense, then go for it, regardless of how far along the platform is. Life is too short to pass on working with things you believe in.

As far as influencers go, you can use a similar philosophy. Influencer marketing is a great way to appeal to more people, but if you get it wrong, you’re going to look the fool. Ask yourself these same questions and find out:

• If the influencer appeals to your target audience.
• If they talk about issues that point to your product or service.
• If their personality complements your brand.

If they satisfy all the criteria and it makes sense for your brand, then there won’t be a consistency issue.

Creating Your Brand

It’s not always an easy thing to do — creating a brand that not only you believe in, but one your consumers believe in as well. Maintain brand consistency throughout and you should be able to portray your company and services in the right light.

To get help working on the logo and design aspect of your brand, visit us at ODA Creative. We’ll help you make a creative design that makes your brand stand out from the crowd.